The After Wife (11 page)

The new assistant teacher, Laura, walked out of Ellie’s classroom. I shanghaied her. “Do you know what this note is about?” Laura had a heart-shaped face and a Wisconsin accent. Around these parts, she’s considered plump. Around these parts, Jennifer Aniston could lose a few. The norms swapped Senna laxatives from their porn-addicted Sikh doctor like Chiclets. Within six months, Laura would be twenty pounds lighter and married to a divorced agent dad. My prediction.

“Um … no?” she said, in question form. “Um … I don’t think so?”
Translation: I know but I’m too scared to tell you. You smell of crazy
.

Ellie sat in the corner wearing a ballerina costume that could have jetéd off center stage at Lincoln Center. I kissed her head, careful not to mess up the headpiece Jay had fashioned out of feathers and sequins. I was thankful I remembered to wash her hair the night before, although I’d forgotten (again) to clip her nails. I couldn’t use my “she’s auditioning for the role of Nosferatu” line again; no one here had understood the joke the first time.

“Mommy, you missed the Halloween Fair,” my ballerina said. Jay
had dressed her as Gelsey Kirkland. It’s sick, but way beyond Ellie’s understanding. (On Chloe’s website, she suggested making your kids’ Halloween costumes out of recycled grocery bags and empty laundry detergent bottles.
And I’m the crazy one
.)

“I know, honey,” I said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“You missed the parade, Mama.” Oh, sorrow. John would have been there. John would have worn a fireman costume and set up the scary-cookie decorating station. He would have made the cookies himself. Even dead, John was the better parent.

“I have to talk to Miss Rhoda,” I said. “Do you want to wait here or in the hall, where I can see you?”

Ellie elected to sit on a bench in her tutu outside Rhoda’s office. She put her little hands on her chubby legs, clad in pink tights, watching me behind her glasses.
Cute does not describe. Cute times 800,000, and you’re a bit closer
.

I interrupted a conversation Rhoda was having with Faux-Rothchild (missing consonant a dead giveaway) about the spring auction. Faux-Rothchild never failed to introduce herself by her full name. Three times a week.

“How do we fill the cabana gap left by the Tisches?” Rhoda asked. She was dressed as a witch—the hat, the cape; her broom, made of sticks, stood in the corner. Her face was purple, and she’d attached a mole on the tip of her nose.

“I hope they have more kids. They were always good for a cabana or two,” Rhoda said. “Does no one do cabanas anymore?”

“Rhoda?” I asked, “did you want to speak to me?” The red note was a throw-down. If this were junior high, I would have tucked my hair into the back of my shirt, and slid my rings to my knuckles.

“Hannah,” Rhoda said, “why don’t you have a seat?” She gave Faux-R a wave, got up, and closed the door. I saw Ellie’s little face disappearing on the other side. I caught her eye before the door closed altogether and my baby winked at me.

Rhoda sat down, her purple face serious and searching. I tried not to focus on the mole. “Hannah,” she finally said, “how are you … adjusting?”

“Adjusting?”

“To being alone,” she said. “Without John? We truly miss him here, at Bunny Hill.”

What did this have to do with John?

“I’m fine,” I said, shifting in my seat. It’s hard being questioned by Margaret Hamilton. I expected to see monkeys flying out of her head.

“Does Ellie talk to you about … John?” she asked.

“I’ve talked to her,” I said. “We had a talk. I’ve tried. I know I have. It’s hard.”

“She’s talking to the other children about her father,” Rhoda said.

“Oh,” I said, relieved. “Well, that’s normal. She misses her daddy.” I tried to will my tears back into their ducts.

“Ellie’s scaring the other children.”

“Scaring them,” I said. I grow cold.
This is just the beginning. Our child will be a delinquent because her father is dead. I see tattoos and piercings and discarded e.p.t. tests in her pink wastebasket. I see a terrible garage band. I see Ellie, snarling and hateful and all of fourteen. Good Lord, I see Samantha Ronson
.

“Ellie is telling the children she’s having conversations with her daddy,” Rhoda said.

I’m shivering. “She’s what? Talking to John?”

“She says John reads
Knuffle Bunny
to her at night. She turns the pages, and he reads. And then, she claims … they sing together—”

Rhoda sifted through papers on her desk. She picked up a note. Ellie, who’d had trouble being away from me, had been able to sleep in her own bed lately. She cried less. If she needed me, she appeared at my bedside at three in the morning, holding her bear. “Mommy, can I come sleep with you?” she’d ask. Was there ever a question? Ellie used to say she was “nocturnal” and “slept with her eyes open.” And now, I was. My sleep was vigilant, watchful, as though if I slept, someone else I cared about would die.

“R. Kelly,” Rhoda read from her notes. “I’m a Flirt.”

“That was kind of their song. I have no rational explanation for it,” I said. I pray that Ellie didn’t recite the lyrics to the kids at
school. I should have listened to Chloe, who only let her kids listen to Disney soundtracks and, you know, barking dogs.

“She’s been talking a lot about death and the spirit world.” Rhoda pursed her lips. “Her words, not mine.”
Oh, dear. Worse than a Goth, Ellie was going to turn out to be Marianne Williamson
.

“Ellie has always had a great imagination,” I say.

“She’s so sensitive and there’s so much to deal with—much too much for a little girl, I’m afraid. She needs help,” Rhoda said.

“I’ll get her help.”

“It’s … become something of a problem for us.”

“What?”

“Parents have started complaining,” Rhoda says.

“Wait. The same parents who’d call John if they needed anything? A snack, a coach, a lifeguard, a handyman, a balloon blower-upper? Those parents?”

“There’s no need to get hostile,” Rhoda said, smiling. Her teeth look yellow against her purple skin. I focus on the happy face button attached to her black cape at the neck. I want to pierce her with it. “We feel that a change would do Ellie good.”

“A change.”

“I’ve got a list of schools here, all very reputable institutions,” Rhoda said, handing me a sheet of paper. “I think she’ll be quite happy at any of them.”

“You’re kicking my daughter out of Bunny Hill?”

“We don’t like to label this kind of action,” Rhoda says. “We don’t want to ruin Ellie’s chances of getting into a good college.”

“Oh my God,” I say.

“We’re not going to put this down in her permanent record, no worries.”

“You’re taking her away from her friends. Away from her teachers.”

“I knew you would understand—”

“What about the pre-learning track?” I say. “Ellie already knows her alphabet, she can write her name. She knows her numbers—”

“She’ll do just fine,” Rhoda is saying. The happy face pin is mocking
me as she moves toward the door. I see photographs of Rhoda with her husband, with her grandchildren, with all the Bunny Hill kids who aren’t on the Dead Daddy Track.

I hate them all.

“What about my tuition?” I said. “We paid through the end of the year.”

“Nonrefundable. Check your contract. That’s really a shame,” she said, distracted, looking for something on her desk. “You take good care, now. Were my keys just here a minute ago?”

“Keys,” I said, turning back. Suddenly, there’s another woman standing next to the stick broom, shaking her head. She’s wearing a housecoat, holding a wooden spoon, her arms crossed at her ample chest. Her brow is shiny with sweat of labor.

“A shand-eh, Rhoda-leh,” this ghostly figure says, shaking her head. “A shand-eh.”

“Rhoda,” I say to her purple face, her yellow teeth.

“Yes?”

“A shand-eh, Rhoda-leh,” I said, mimicking the lady in the corner, who’s there, tired as the day she passed. I take a guess. “Your grandmother is very disappointed.”

Even under the purple makeup, I saw Rhoda turn white.

“Ellie!” I say. She’s not outside the office. “Ellie!” Where is she? I want to leave this place as quickly as possible. I run past her cubby, through her classroom, where her drawings are pasted on the wall, and find her twirling in the sandbox for the last time. I see that she’s grown so much, just in a month. Time is fluid. Time spills through my fingers. The world keeps spinning, farther from John having stood here, at this spot. At the tree he planted there. At the sandbox he filled. Tulle flies up in the air. Ellie’s laughing. The world is cruel beyond measure. Already, at three, she’s learned this. Already, she’s coping better than I am.

* * *

“Ellie’s been kicked out of Bunny Hill,” I announce to the Grief Team while attempting to defrost a month-old Chloe vegan meal. “But that’s not the bad part.”

“What?” Chloe asks. “That’s completely unacceptable.” She’s brought her daughter Lorraine and a sniffing, barking, snarling pack of rescue dogs to the house. Spice is going crazy. Lorraine is on all fours, barking.

“Why is Lorraine barking?” Jay asks. “Should we fetch her a water bowl?”

“She wants attention,” Chloe said. “I posted about it on my blog this morning. You wouldn’t believe the number of responses I got. At least five or six.” Lorraine is in kindergarten at Carlthorpe, what I jokingly refer to as “the missionary school” on 4th and Montana. The children dressed in uniforms, the boys had Brylcreemed hair, the girls wore headbands. When I’d see them lined up on the street for school, they looked like Latter Day Saints dolls.

Aimee walked in, bringing a bad chemical peel with her.

“Did your face get into a fight with a blowtorch?” I asked.

“My agent’s about to drop me,” she said, opening the freezer and grabbing the ever-diminishing vodka bottle.

“Didn’t you defriend Stoli?” Jay said, eyeing the bottle.

“You expect me to quit, now?” Aimee said. “I’m under enormous pressure. You don’t just drop old friends like that.”

“Aimee, when you were twenty-five, you swore you would never do anything to your face,” I said. “Serious actresses have faces that do face things.”

“Twenty-five? Oh, right, that was before I got the big role I’ve always wanted—oh, wait, I never got it, remember?” Aimee said.

“Look at Jodie Foster,” Chloe said, “or Annette Bening.”

“Jodie has something called a jawline; all the hot lesbians have it,” Aimee said. “Bening is beautiful, but she shouldn’t go on camera with her real face. It just makes people angry. Besides, my skin’s going to look like Drew Barrymore at fourteen in a week.”

“Oh, back when she was doing blow,” Jay said. “Do they still call it blow? That’s why I can’t keep a man. I’m so outmoded.”

“Let me repeat. Ellie has been kicked out of Bunny Hill,” I said.

“Good,” Aimee said, “I hate that place. So pretentious. Reminds me of my own childhood, if I’d actually had one.”

“They never appreciated her fashion sense,” Jay said. “My God, they should give her a medal!”

“I’m calling Rhoda right this minute,” Chloe said, punching numbers into her iPhone. “Three years ago, I got them tickets for the
Dancing with the Stars
finale for their spring auction—they’ll listen to me—”

“Three years ago, you had money,” Aimee said.

“Remember the parties?” Jay said, looking wistful. “Who doesn’t love a repressed banker?”

“Guys,” I said, “focus. Ellie was kicked out because she’s talking to her dad.”

“Dad John? Dead John?” Jay asked. “What is going on in this house?!”

“It’s not real. She’s stressed out,” Chloe said. “I saw this coming from a mile away. You know, this would make a really good topic for my blog.”

“Now you’re just fucking with me, right?” Aimee said to Chloe.

“She’s scaring the perfect children who have two living parents,” I said.

“Little intact-family punks,” Jay said.

“Let’s be practical,” Chloe said. “Ellie needs help. She’s endured a huge loss. Her dad was her anchor. Their worlds revolved around each other.”

“And Hannah figures into this situation … how?” Aimee said.

“I’m not saying Hannah isn’t a great mom,” Chloe said, as Lorraine barked. “Down, girl, that’s a good girl.” Lorraine crept from the room.

“I was a good-enough mom married to Super Dad,” I said. “And that was good enough then. But not anymore.”

“What do they talk about?” Jay asked. “Has she ever mentioned Uncle Jay?”

“John reads to her at night. And they sing together,” I said. “Like before, like always.”

“Usher?” Aimee asked.

“Oh, wait. Oh my God, R. Kelly again?” Jay asked. “Not that I’m glad John’s dead—I’m not, I adored him, but that I don’t miss.”

“Bullshit people with their bullshit power trips …,” Aimee said, then, “If I adopt a kid and get him in Bunny Hill, do you think I might find a new agent?”

“Where’s the cranberry part?” Jay asked, nodding at Aimee’s drink.

“Shut it, Mother,” Aimee said.

“What should I do?” I asked. “How do I talk to Ellie … do I talk to her?”

“Spy on her,” Jay said.

Chloe squeezed my hand. “I have three child psychologists on speed dial. I can’t use them anymore since the collection calls started—”

“I appreciate it, Chloe,” I said, “I really do, but I don’t think Ellie needs therapy. She seems … happy.”

Chloe wasn’t giving up. “I’m not saying this is a substitute, but when children lose a loved one, they need something to fill that void. I know you have Spice, but maybe she needs something small and cuddly—”

“Puppy-pusher,” Jay said.

“Mommy?” Ellie said from the other room. “Lorraine keeps barking at me.”

“She’s herding,” Chloe said. “It’s totally normal. Kids cope with stress in their own ways. It has to do with Billy’s unemployment and evolving social conscience.”

“And nothing to do with your obsession with strays,” Jay said, peering into the living room. “I think Lorraine is shedding.”

Aimee laughed, then grimaced, touching her face. “Ow, ow, ow! Don’t make me laugh—it burns, it burns!”